


Punching Bag

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 11:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6282679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry and Iris and boxing</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punching Bag

Barry arrives back at STAR Labs to find Iris, wearing a tight white top and black sweatpants and, well, pumas for a change (at least she wasn’t doing that in heels, not that she wouldn’t be able to, he had no doubts), and her hair up in a ponytail coming undone and her body, every bit of what was left exposed by her clothing choice, glistening in a way that sends a shiver down Barry’s spine and knocks the air out of his lungs and he’s almost certain he has lost his mind: firstly Iris gave up boxing when they first started college, secondly, why would she be training in STAR Labs anyway? He just knows for sure that he’s not in a daydream delusional state cause Cisco is there holding the punching bag and Cisco is never there when Barry is having a fantasy about Iris (not that it happens too often, he has the thing totally under control. When you compare it to his teenage years anyway).  

“What are you guys doing?”, he asks, cautiously approaching the area in which there’s now a ring.

“I’m training”, she answers simply, her eyes never diverting to Barry’s direction, her face doing that little thing it does in the middle of her forehead when she’s greatly concentrated.  

“With Cisco?”

“He’s a metahuman”, she says, and the punch she trows next moves Cisco slightly out of place and Barry watches as Cisco gives her an impressed smile. 

“So?”, Barry tries again, cause he’s seriously not following and it’s only half because his brain is short-circuiting with the sight of her like that.

“So I don’t wanna get my ass kicked by a metahuman again so I should learn to fight metahumans and nothing like a metahuman to train me to it”, she says between her teeth, synchronising each “metahuman” with a punch on the bag.

“It was her idea”, Cisco tells him.

And then it suddenly makes sense. He knew Iris was shaken, but it had been such a busy 24 hours since what happened that he didn’t really had time to check up on her. 

Zoom had threatened to derail a train while one of his meta-minions had Iris locked up at CCPN, a hand too close to her neck. He had no regrets about the decision he made of saving Iris but it did cause the train to derail and three people were dead now and he guessed she wasn’t as ok with his decision as he was. 

Still, going through a spiral of desperate need to push oneself beyond the limit was not gonna make things happen any differently. Barry should know since he had tried that, and Iris was always more rational about this sort of stuff than he ever was so it was always strange to be put in a position where he had to ground her;

“Iris, this is so not the solution.”

“Says who? You?”, and she says  _you_  with such distaste that sends an unpleasant shiver through him.

“Wait, you’re mad at me?”

“Yes, I’m mad at you”, she says, and finally stops moving to face him.  _God, she’s pretty_. Not particularly important at the moment, always nice though.

“Iris —”, he doesn’t really know what to say. He expected sad, maybe angry at Zoom and at life in general, not at him.

“Ok”, Cisco says, looking between the two of them and slowly stepping away from Iris like he’s afraid she’ll actually punch him; “Here’s an idea: Barry’s a metahuman, he trains you and you two leave me out of this… _thing_ … you two are having.”

But Barry barely even listens to it, he closes the distance between Iris and him and even all sweaty she smells good, flowery and sweet like, like Iris, and sometimes life is just not fair like that, how could he possibly concentrate on anything when all he can think is about how much he wants to lick the little sweat drop running down from her collarbones to her chest. His stomach does a somersault at the sight of it and his lungs fill with a need to grab her and bite and lick and kiss and suck all over. He shakes himself out of it; 

“Why the hell are you mad?”

“I told you over the phone, I was fine, I told you you should let me handle myself and you still —”

She can’t possibly think that after what happened with Tar Pit he’s ever gonna let her in harms’ way, that he’ll ever choose anyone else first, that he’ll ever run the risk of being too slow again;

“I’m not letting you get hurt again”, he interrupts her; “If you’re mad about that than I’m sorry but you’ll just have to deal.”

“Well, there’s a psychopath on the loose because of it. There’s three people dead because you’ve chosen to save me!”, she points the sentence by throwing first one glove and then the other at him. They don’t quite reach but he has never seen Iris throw anything since the hormonal phase of teenage years so it’s actually scary how upset at him she is right now.

“You’re more important”, he hears himself shouting at her, and Iris shouts right back;

“Than an entire train full of people? Than the whole rest of the world?”

“Yes! YES! You’re more important than the rest of the world. What do you want me to say? That I’ll always choose you? I’ll always choose you, no matter the stakes and it’s not your choice, it’s mine, and I don’t care how selfish it is because if I loose you —”, he can’t even grasp the possibility in his mind. It’s too big, it’s too much, too much pain just thinking about it; “I can’t be a hero if you’re not here, how hard is that for you to understand?”, and he’s still shouting, still mad, but her eyes…  

If she looked ready to fight him before he watches as her expression drops now, her eyes big, fluttering at him and she takes in a sharp breath and then another and steps closer to him, one of her hands extended to reach for him but she changes her mind half way through it, dropping it by her body and he allows himself just one more once over as she asks him, soft and sweet now;

“So help me so you don’t have to choose me.”

He shakes his head.

“Iris —”

“Barry, I’m gonna fight, I’m always gonna fight and you’ll just have to deal. Now you can help me or I can find someone else who will”, and he’s not totally convinced. On one hand the fact that she can defend herself has never hurt and if she wants to improve that then all the better, on the other though he fears she might be focusing on the wrong reasons to do it. 

He has no fighting chance though, not when she grabs his hands and tells him; “I would rather if it was you, training me, I mean.”

And she looks at him that way, that way that has always had him stuck in place. Her dark deep eyes have him like ice against warm skin, like an insect in a web, like a prey waiting to be taken. Except there has always been a pleasure in it, in her eyes locked on his, and who is he kidding, he will always oblige to whatever she asks him to, so he just nods and whispers;

“Ok.”

And the smile she flashes him in return would make anything in the world worth it.


End file.
